


Only This and Nothing More

by dairesfanficrefuge_archivist



Category: Highlander - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-04-18
Updated: 1999-04-18
Packaged: 2018-12-18 05:56:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist/pseuds/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist
Summary: Note from Daire, the archivist: this story was originally archived atDaire's Fanfic Refuge. Deciding to give the stories a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address onDaire's Fanfic Refuge's collection profile.





	Only This and Nothing More

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Daire, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Daire's Fanfic Refuge](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Daire%27s_Fanfic_Refuge). Deciding to give the stories a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Daire's Fanfic Refuge's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/dairesfanficrefuge/profile).

Only This and Nothing More by Rab

| 

_Only This and Nothing More_

By Rab 

(This story originally appeared in the print zine Rules of the Game #4, edited by Catherine Schlein, in a somewhat different form.) 

* * *

At the sound of the elevator coming up, Methos and Duncan MacLeod looked up from their chess game to see Joe Dawson. The Watcher made his way over to them, looking grateful for the chair he sank into, and accepting Mac's offer of a coffee. 

"Busy day?" Methos asked. 

"Busy enough." Joe fished the large manila envelope from his pocket, glad to finally complete this errand and curious as to what his old friend had wanted him to pass along to Adam Pierson. "I was doing some straightening up in my office and came across this; I'd forgotten all about it." Joe proffered it to Methos as Mac came over with the coffee. Watching Methos handle the packet with curious trepidation, Joe elaborated, "Don Salzer gave that to me to hold awhile back; said he wanted me to give it to you, if he never got the chance." 

"What is it?" 

Taking a sip of coffee, Joe shook his head. "No idea." 

Methos didn't look all that eager to open it, although Joe thought that might be as much because of the memories it brought back, as any concern as to the contents. It had almost been funny, in retrospect, the way Don used to talk about Adam, brag about him; as proud of him as if the young Watcher had been his own son. Joe doubted Methos had looked on Don as any kind of father figure, but he'd knew they'd been close. It wouldn't surprise him if Don Salzer was one of the few people the Old Man _had_ let himself get close to in a long old time. 

"Aren't you going to open it?" Mac said. 

Looking at both of them, turning the package over in his hands, Methos shrugged and tore open the envelope, emptying its contents onto the big, square coffee table. It wasn't much: a slightly battered leather-bound book, and a letter-sized envelope addressed to _Adam Pierson._ Methos turned back the cover of the book, then with a look of bemused intrigue opened the letter and quickly scanned the several loose pages. 

"What's he say?" Mac said, sharing a speculative look with Joe. 

After another couple of moments, Methos passed the letter to Joe, getting up to walk over to a window, suddenly fascinated with the world beyond these walls. 

Riffling through the pages filled with Don's neat, cramped writing, Joe looked at the figure standing so still, then at Mac who gave an uncertain shrug, eyebrows raised. Clearing his throat, Joe began to read: 

_"Dear Adam, Remember you asked me the other day what had me so preoccupied? Well, it started with this book -- a private journal, as it turned out. It was part of that collection I picked up on London last year. Guess I should say, in 1991, since there's no knowing when you'll read this. Maybe never, if I can work up my nerve to just talk to you about it. You see, the journal was kept by a young lady in the mid-eighteenth century, named Olivia Harris. If I'm right, that name should ring a bell. The young lady not only kept a very lively journal -- and I do mean 'lively' -- she also exercised her considerable talent for sketching. I must say, she captured your likeness quite well."_

Joe looked up as Mac leafed through the journal, then turned it for Joe to see: there were a series of pen-and-ink sketches -- one a partial nude, of the subject sleeping. The hair was longer, and the clothes the height of Georgian fashion, but there could be no mistaking the face as belonging to anyone but Methos. Joe and Mac looked over at the flesh-and-blood version, but he remained intent upon whatever it was he glimpsed out the window -- or whatever memories were playing through his mind. 

After a moment, Joe went back to the letter. _"I have to admit to a great curiosity as to what became of Olivia, why her journal ends so abruptly in 1762, when she was only twenty-seven. Perhaps one day you'll be able to tell me--"_

"She was murdered." Methos turned from the window, meeting Mac's thoughtful gaze, his own expression shuttered. "By one of us -- Geoffrey Devere. He thought it would provoke me into fighting him." 

"Was he right?" the Highlander asked quietly. 

Methos' answer was as soft and vibrant with dangerous undercurrent. "Yes." 

Joe watched them, thinking he understood, a little; wondering where they got the strength to go through it over and over again. "Are you sure you want to share this?" 

Methos hesitated a moment, then nodded and came back over to sit down. "Go on." 

Sitting back more comfortably, Joe read on. _"I couldn't believe it at first and kept trying to come up with some sensible explanation. Remember how I started asking about your family -- who they had been, where they had come from? I was looking for some proof that Olivia's lover, Jonathan Adams, was somehow your great-great-etc.-grandfather, and this was just an amazing case of genetics at work. The wildest Dickensians series of coincidences would have been easier to accept, at first, than the possibility that the young man I had sponsored, had worked with all these years, wasn't a young man at all, but an Immortal. _

"To be honest, Adam, it scared me. You scared me -- or awed me. I'm not sure which. I've been a Watcher most of my life, researching the lives of Immortals has been an endless source of fascination for me. But I suppose it's a little like a theologian who is perfectly comfortable with God in the abstract, at a distance, but not quite prepared to have the Archangel Gabriel come over for lunch. 

"I was torn, as well, between my feelings for you and my loyalty to the Watchers. By all rights, I should have reported my suspicions at once and turned over all the pertinent evidence -- but I couldn't bring myself to do it. If you had some hidden agenda, some plan afoot to reveal our existence to other Immortals, to destroy us, I could find no indications of it. I couldn't even find evidence that you were using Watcher records to hunt down and kill other Immortals. The more I thought about it, the less it seemed like some malicious infiltration of our ranks, and more as if, having discovered us, your curiosity was piqued. And that working in research especially appealed to your possessive sense of history. 

"You know, I used to wonder why you would get so annoyed with revisionist historians and the like, nitpicking over what often seemed trivial details to me. To be honest, Adam, there were times when it was a little exasperating and I wanted to ask where a wet-behind-the-ears kid got off thinking he knew more about subjects that other men and women had devoted their whole lives to. And I suppose, looking back, that along should have made me suspicious; how you could know such minute details, describe events and people just as though you had been there and seen it all. It just never crossed my mind to think it was anything but an extraordinary knack for ferreting out information, combined with an uncanny insight into human nature. 

"I talked to Joe Dawson about it once, very elliptically. What if Immortals found out about us? How could we ever be sure one of them hadn't slipped by our background checks and become one of us?" 

Joe looked up from the letter, remembering, nodding to himself. "Yeah, I told him I didn't think it had to mean any kind of catastrophe, that it would depend on the Immortal -- if it was a Darius or a Grayson. I had no idea it was anything but idle speculation for him." 

"He never let on what was on his mind?" Mac said. 

"Not a hint." Joe looked at Methos. "Shall I go on?" At a nod, he resumed reading a little further along, _"A lot of things began to fall into place, a couple in particular that I'd been too grateful for at the time to think about any further. Remember that car accident you were in, Christmas '89?"_ Joe looked over at the oldest Immortal. "That the one where Jenny Malone was killed?" 

"Yeah." Methos turned to Mac, saying, "Jenny had just joined the Watchers a few months before; we were sort of dating. We'd just left Ian Bancroft's place after a party when some drunk driver came out of nowhere and slammed into the car. Jenny died at the scene; the paramedics couldn't understand how I didn't even get a scratch." 

"I'm sorry." 

"So was I; she was a nice kid." Methos shrugged in a way that wasn't dismissive of Jenny Malone's short life, but accepting that it _was_ just one of those things. 

Joe sighed, absolutely certain he wouldn't trade places with them for anything. _"Then there was that time Christine got mugged,"_ Joe resumed reading, _"and she swore she had seen you get stabbed. I was just so happy she was unharmed, that you'd been there to help her, that I assumed the shock had affected her memory. After all you were right there, and not a mark on you._

"I saw it myself just the other day, and still don't know if I believe it. You were opening that carton of books, remember, and the knife slipped and cut your arm. You concealed it from the customer well enough -- but I saw. Adam, it was the most amazing thing: one moment you were bleeding, and then there was nothing -- not even the faintest scar. Do you ever get used to that? Do you ever think it won't work this time? What is it like to die and come back? It's just the most fantastic thing I've ever seen! It makes me wonder about so many things, too. Accounts of stigmata, miraculous risings from the dead... Do you believe in God, Adam? Do you know if there is anything after this mortal life? Have you been to the other side and come back? Is the Quickening the soul of the Immortal you've slain? Suddenly it's so frustrating not to be able to ask you, any of you, what you know, what you've experienced. Think of the stories you, or Darius, or so many others could tell! All the research and watching in the world will never answer all these questions. 

"And you, especially, how much could you tell us, if only we could ask? Because I've been thinking some more and wondering if maybe it's too much of a coincidence, that an incognito Immortal would get himself assigned to the Methos Project. There are only two possible answers, aren't there? Either you're looking for him, for whatever reason -- or, you are him. You are Methos.

"Is that possible, Adam? Is that why you know so well what the world was like when civilization was young? Have you walked the earth these past five thousand years? Five thousand... Adam, it's incredible, and I don't know what to think anymore. 

"I keep wanting to tell someone about this, but can't quite bring myself to broach it to you, not yet. And I don't dare tell the Watchers. As often as I've told myself that your being Methos would make all the difference, that no possible harm could befall you -- I worry, though. I've heard little rumors, whispers...they trouble me. I'm not sure all of us are entirely to be trusted anymore. 

"Oh my, all these years of trying to put together a cohesive chronicle of Methos' life, trying to find him, to discover if the myth ever had flesh and bone, and if he still walked among us -- and for eight years now he's been calling himself Adam Pierson and coming over every Sunday for chess and dinner, putting up with my and Christine's efforts to match him up with a nice girl. It's almost farcical. 

"Well, I've rambled on long enough. I needed to write it all down for my own peace of mind. Keeping your secret is a terrible responsibility, but one I gladly accept. It's just all so... What's that expression you young people use? Mind-blowing? Young people -- see? I still can't quite get it through my mind: that you were old when the Pyramids were young." 

Joe turned the last page over to see if there was anything else. "That's it." He shuffled the pages back together and looked at some of the other documents in the envelope. "Looks like he did some research," he said, examining a photocopy of a birth certificate that had been issued for Adam Pierson, born in Wales in 1962, and who had only had five months on Earth. 

"He was good at that." Methos was idly leafing through Olivia's journal now, locating the sketches. "I had no idea she'd done these." He sighed, then looked at Joe and Mac, as if he couldn't quite process it all. "He never let on that he knew. I mean, finding me, finding Methos, that was his Holy Grail, his prize. I don't get it." 

Joe gave him a considering look. "Maybe he discovered there were more important things than winning a prize." He shook his head and finished his coffee, making a face at its having gone cold. "Anyway, it sounds like it was enough for Don to know you were real, that he hadn't spent his life chasing a myth." 

"He wasn't afraid of telling me, was he? I mean, he didn't think I'd harm him?" 

"Would you have?" Mac said, and Methos gave him a faintly offended look. Mac nodded and said, "It sounded to me like he knew that. He was more concerned about your welfare than his." 

Methos held his gaze for another moment, then slumped down on the couch, looking morose. "It got him killed anyway, didn't it?" 

"Kalas wasn't your fault." 

"I should have been there. Any other day, I would have." 

"And what good would that have done? Kalas would have just killed both of you." 

The older Immortal gave the younger a sour look. "I might have got lucky, you know." 

Mac shrugged. "And you might not, and where would we all be now? Life happens -- or so you're always telling me. Don't you subscribe to your own philosophy?" 

"Doesn't mean I have to like it all the time." Methos reached for the letter, sorting through its pages. "I wish he'd told me. I wish..." He sighed. "He was right: what's the point of watching, of gathering information, when the only way to get any answers is to meet face to face?" 

Joe spread his hands in a 'don't ask me' gesture. "It's just the way it's always been set up. Anytime you guys want to send me your memoirs, though..." 

That finally got a faint smile from the two Immortals, Mac saying, "Do you have questions, Joe, things we've made you wonder about?" 

"Lots. You said it, though, Mac: there's some things we have to take on faith." 

"Yeah, that always covers a lot of sins," was Methos' obscure observation on that, drawing curious looks from the other two. 

"So -- what?" Mac said. "Darius believed, but you don't?" 

"You must believe there's some purpose in your existence," Joe said. 

"If you say so." 

"Why'd you offer me your head then?" Mac said. "What's it matter who wins in the end, if there's no purpose to any of it?" 

Methos gave him a sober look. "Good question." 

Joe spoke into the silence, "I don't think Don would have thought that. He might have saved himself, if he told Kalas where to find you. Why do you think he didn't?" 

"Because Watchers never reveal information." 

"If I thought you really believed that, I'd be worried about you." Reaching for his cane. Joe got to his feet. "Well, I thought you should have that stuff. Do what you want with it." 

"Yeah, thanks, Joe. I do appreciate it. It's just...I wasn't expecting it." 

"I think he just wanted you to know he knew -- and got a hoot out of it." 

A wry smile quirked Methos' mouth. " _'Only this and nothing more.'_ Yeah, maybe." 

Going to the elevator, Joe looked back at them, knowing exactly how Don had felt. It was something, all right, knowing an Immortal, being able to call one a friend. It was worth breaking a few rules. 

**\--the end--**

* * *

© 1999   
Please send comments to the author! 

04/18/1999 

Moyra's WebJewels 

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